BECKET, Mass. — Pamela Tatge took over as artistic director of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival last year; this is the first year that all the artistic plans are hers. It’s also the 85th anniversary of what dance folks refer to as the Pillow.

On Wednesday, the opening night of the festival, Ms. Tatge welcomed audiences with introductory speeches that were energetic, warm and visionary. Without notes and with neither haste nor waste, she speaks of Pillow tradition (marvelously eclectic — multicultural, too); welcomes back companies that are old friends; proudly announces premieres; and mentions which companies she is happy to see making their debuts at the Pillow this year precisely because she’s seen their work elsewhere. I heard her give a welcome address before the Inside/Out open-air appearance by Pilobolus (a double bill including a world premiere) and a completely different one a few hours later, for the Miami City Ballet triple bill in the Ted Shawn Theater, the festival’s main stage.

Ms. Tatge stressed that she had known that she wanted Miami City, returning to the festival after 19 years, to open this season. She praised its achievement; hailed its director, Lourdes Lopez; and observed that its program consisted of three different pairings of choreographers and composers: George Balanchine and Tchaikovsky for “Allegro Brillante” (1956); Peter Martins and Samuel Barber for “Barber Violin Concerto” (1988); and Christopher Wheeldon and Gyorgy Ligeti for “Polyphonia” (2001). Though most of the music was taped, this usefully focused the mind to connect ear and eye while watching.

Miami City Ballet has always been extensively based on another City Ballet, the New York one. All three ballets it presented on Wednesday were created for the New York company. In recent years, Miami has been fortunate with premieres of its own (notably those by Alexei Ratmansky and Justin Peck), but the Shawn stage, far smaller than those it employs in South Florida, surely ruled those out, with their large ensembles and scenery.

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Simone Messmer in “Barber Violin Concerto.” CreditBen Sklar for The New York Times

Many connoisseurs have said, fairly, that Miami City dances the way New York City used to (fast, space-devouring, clear, outstandingly musical). If there’s a difference between the two, it’s an easy one to spot — the Miamians dance with sunshine.

Still, even though Ms. Lopez has built successfully upon the achievements of her predecessor, the founding director Edward Villella — both were New York City Ballet principal dancers — her company is now in transition. As I’ve said, it has fared well with recent choreographic commissions. But one of its finest, most beloved ballerinas, Patricia Delgado, has left; another, her sister, Jeanette, has taken a leave of absence.

So how does today’s Miami City look at the Pillow? In the prima role of “Allegro Brillante,” Jennifer Lauren — making her debut in an exacting part — began cautious, guarded, but gained sweep and bloom as she proceeded. Her partner, Renan Cerdeiro, is integrity personified: In his dancing, you see a whole person who makes the ballet’s world more real. The corps, four male-female couples, took full charge of the brilliantly intricate details. (Balanchine keeps ringing the changes: Each man partners each of the women in the course of the work.)

“Polyphonia” is a cool piece, yet you could feel Miamian warmth here and there in it. A male duet for Jovani Furlan and Kleber Rebello exhilarated; Tricia Albertson and Reyneris Reyes danced the most prestigious duets with cool eloquence; Ms. Lauren showed real sparkle in another duet with Mr. Rebello.

Differences between Miami City Ballet and what you may call its parent company were most evident in the program’s weakest item, “Barber Violin Concerto.” This is an odd vehicle for contrasting pairs of stars: two ballet, two barefoot modern. Nathalia Arja, so explosively energetic, and Rainer Krenstetter, elegant and almost imperturbable, were as vivid as the tiresome third movement would allow.

Chase Swatosh was politely impressive as the barefoot and bare-chested man, but as the grand ballerina who finds romantic expansiveness by spending time with the bare-chested modernist, Simone Messmer was a closed book. “Barber” is one of those late-Romantic works in which the ballerina must literally let her hair down. Ms. Messmer, a former American Ballet Theater soloist of note who joined this company in 2015, stayed an ice queen throughout.

Follow Alastair Macaulay on Twitter: @AMacaulayNYT

Jacob’s Pillow Dance FestivalContinues through Aug. 27 in Becket, Mass. Miami City Ballet dances at the Ted Shawn Theater through June 25; jacobspillow.org